My journey with GMB started before 2011 but more from a suspicious perspective rather than a supportive one. It was then I started asking myself about the intentions and past of this seemingly pious puritan that makes his so attractive to the northern hegemony. Luckily for me, the veil fell off my eyes early enough, giving me ample time to join and contribute to his campaign efforts for the 2011 elections. Someone tweeted that with the results coming from the SE/SS now, its obvious the election was massively rigged in that region in the last election so it is fair to argue that Buhari could have won the election then too but that’s history now.
Fast forward four years to 2015, we are standing on the precipice of an incumbent routing at the polls by the ‘people’s general’, having run for the same seat at four consecutive polls. When he wins, he will be making history, breaking any available record in that regards. I suspect business schools will start using him as a business case on how re-branding should work, and inspirational preachers will teach on how we should not give up, no matter how many times we had tried and failed.
In my fight and push for a GMB presidency, one push back I have received more than any other is the mantra that ‘our vote will not count, so why should I bother myself’. And my reply since 2011 remains the same – one day, our votes will count in this country, let it not be that when that happens, you did not cast your vote. So, whether it is rigged or not, go out to vote and exercise your civic rights. And that, we have done in 2015, and we did not leave it to chance, but we stood up to protect our future.
Today, we might be making history for ourselves, and our children yet unborn, giving to them a nation that is truly theirs. A nation that thinks and cares about them, a nation yielding its resources for their happiness and comfort, a nation they can be proud of, a nation whose passport they are willing to shove into any face at any country’s border, a nation they do not need to run from but run to, a nation they can truly call theirs. If we can do this as a nation now, then my dream has not ended…because in that dream, I did not see Nigeria but I saw the world…from Nigeria!!!
I am the author of Scaling for Success: Empowering African SMEs. I am a Partner at Sahel Capital, a food and agriculture-focused private investment firm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sahel Capital manages the Fund for Agriculture Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN) and the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA).
I co-lead SEFAA, an impact-first fund investing in agribusinesses that provide direct or indirect benefits to smallholder farmers across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead investments and portfolio management for SEFAA and manage FAFIN portfolios, two of which were recently exited. I am a director on the board of one of the portfolio companies and serve in advisory roles for several startups and SMEs.